Special Issue for the International Journal of Social Research Methodology (IJSRM)
Call for Papers: Computational Social Science - Research Strategies, Design & Methods
Editors: William Housley, Adam Edwards, Matthew Williams and Malcolm Williams
Cardiff School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University
Deadline: 1 May 2012
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This special issue is contextualised in terms of the ‘coming crisis of empirical sociology’, which is located in the increasing asymmetry between traditional sociological methods and the power of transactional data generated through the internet. This has led some commentators to question the extent to which public sociology and social science can compete with the data rich resources built into the marketing and data generation strategies of the large multinational corporations that hold and marshal much of this transactional data. With the explosion in social media and the interactive web (Web2.0) the potential for systematic data mining, social informatics and data visualization in relation to key social science concerns and questions provides an opportunity for next generation digital social science research. What can be called ‘computational social science’ encompasses a range of research strategies, designs and methods of data collection and analysis arising out of innovations in Web2.0 technologies and their use in social media.